If there were a clock hanging on the wall in our white, skillfully designed room at Cocoon, which, of course, there isn’t - it would only show three times. The clock would read 7:30, 13:00 and 17:00. The hand would cross those hours leisurely, lazily to announce to the few people and many animals in the vicinity the start of yoga at 7:30 (followed by breakfast), lunch at 13:00, and yoga at 17:00 (followed by dinner). On this farm in Portugal I entered, for the first time, into a world in which the itinerary is reliably engorged with necessary bouts of empty time. Blank space in a life that until this week has been crowded to the absolute brim with an engagement, a new job and the faithful commitments that are summer in the city. But not at here at Cocoon.

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